14x6 E30 "bottle cap"  wheels
My wife really disliked the stock gold basket weave wheels.  The "bottle caps" are not the best wheels or the 15x7 size that I really want but this is a low $$ project so they will have to do, at least for a while. I mounted 205/60/14 Sumitomo HTR 200 tires.  I fabricated some spacers out of 6061 T6 aluminum.  The front spacers are .370" thick and the wheels just clear the tie rod ends.  As you can see in the picture below there is little of the center "hub-centric" shoulder to locate the wheel.  I have driven this over a thousand miles like this with no problems at all.  The rear spacer is the same only .300" thick.  The rear tire/wheel clears the lower suspension control arm by .5" or so.  The rear hub has a longer "hub-centric" shoulder so it locates the wheel fine.  I tried 35mm long wheel bolts but they did not have enough thread engagement so I went with 43mm wheel bolts from Turner Motorsports.
front hub/spacer

I found an unintended benefit with these wheels.  The different backspacing and OD of the tire improve the scrub radius of the steering geometry and now it feels like it has power steering.  The looks of the car are greatly improved with the larger OD tire/wheel combination, at least in my opinion.  The the 3.91 rear gear it still accelerates very well and cruise RPM has been slightly reduced, making freeway travel a little nicer. I have been asked a few times what "scrub radius" is, here's a drawing from Herb Adams book "Chassis Engineering". It's one of my favorite reference books-every enthusiast should have a copy.

These wheels have been moved to my '78 daily driver to replace the stock steel wheels that came on it.


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